Board Game Review – Massive Darkness

The game title isn’t kidding, this game is massive! Massive Darkness by CMON is a cooperative role-playing game (RPG) for up to 6 players. This game is dungeon master-less, and all players will be working with the same goals to defeat the dungeon’s many monsters. The game includes 75 figurines, 280 cards and a bunch of tokens. You and your friends take turns kicking down doors, fighting monsters and collecting loot, all while trying to make it out alive.

Over the weekend my friends and I learned the rules. We then worked our way through the tutorial quest and the first mission. The tutorial was relatively quick, but I think the first mission took us close to 5 hours to complete. Now the game says 90 mins, but our group is pretty slow when it comes to RPGs. We like to discuss all routes and ways to stay alive.

Our late night with the first mission.

Without a dungeon master, the monsters function with a set of rules to chase, stab and murder the players. Additionally, depending on the card draw, the monsters form a mob. The mob will have a boss that carries and uses a piece of loot, while being protected by its minions (equal to the number of players). With a difficult door or event card draw, players can become overwhelmed in a hurry.

The base game includes 75 detailed miniatures.

Play passes around the table, with each hero taking up to 3 actions to open doors, pickup loot, trade gear and/or fight monsters. Players will have to work together to defeat swarms as they progress through the quest. As the team moves through the board the monsters get harder, but the loot gets sweeter.

The base game includes the plastic player boards which is a great addition to an RPG game.

Overall the combat was easy to learn and looting is a lot of fun. We saved our progress on the campaign that is included in the base game. Additionally there are quite a few expansion packs which can mix up the monsters you run into. I will blog again soon about our progress and the inclusion of the expansion packs.

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